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Football London
Football London
Sport
Aidan McCartney & Lee Wilmot

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink explains why Claudio Ranieri never won the Premier League at Chelsea

Claudio Ranieri was often called the Tinkerman during his time at Chelsea.

And it is the way he set out his team that ultimately cost him the Premier League title at Stamford Bridge.

At least that's according to one of his players at the time Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.

Ranieri arrived in west London in 200 and in his first two seasons guided the Blues to sixth-place finishes in the Premier League, despite having a squad packed full of talent like John terry, frank Lampard, Hasselbaink, Marcel Desailly and Gianfranco ZOla.

Things improved in 2002/03, as Chelsea qualified for the Champions League by finishing fourth.

Chelsea Q&A with Oliver Harbord

And then Roman Abramovich bought the club, ploughing millions in, with Ranieri signing the likes of Damien Duff, Hernan Crespo, Adrian Mutu, Scott Parker, Joe Cole and Claude Makelele ahead of the 03/04 campaign.

Chelsea finished second that following season - 11 points behind Invincibles Arsenal, and got to the semi-finals of the Champions League.

But Abramovich wanted more and Ranieri was sacked, replaced by Jose Mourinho who won the title in his first season.

Ranieri would go on to win the Premier League in that astonishing Leicester City campaign of 2015/16, but his ever-changing approach was his downfall according to Hasselbaink.

In an interview with FourFourTwo, Hasselbaink said: "I couldn’t believe my luck [when Ranieri came in from Atletico].

"Back then I was in his good books because I was scoring lots of goals and he didn’t have the money to replace me.

"Those four years under him were difficult. We had a better team than the table showed and should have finished higher. He’s a good man and I don’t think anyone disliked him as a person – he just had some ideas that didn’t work.

"We never knew which system we were playing. Even if we trained on the Friday using one system, the next morning he might have changed it to something else.

"He believed that everyone should be able to adapt, and that it’s a weapon to switch formation. But he’d do it four or five times in a game and it confused us."

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